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In "Starship Troopers" the book, a trainee asks why they are learning to throw knives when they have nukes. The instructor stops the drill, and points out that you don't housetrain a puppy by decapitating it. The military is supposed to used controlled force to achieve policy objectives, not wanton destruction. He tells the recruit who to talk to if he still doesn't understand.

In the movie, the instructor throws a knife through the recruit's hand, and says, "Hard to push a button now, eh?"

I get that the movie is satire. I even get that there's a lot in the book that can be fairly satirized. The problem is, the movie is lazy, unfair, incompetent satire.

If the movie follows the story, there actually aren't any paradoxes. Instead, there are stable time loops (once called 'perpendoxes' because they are 'orthogonal to paradoxes'). Such loops don't contradict themselves like a paradox does. Killing your grandfather so you don't ever have existed, so you couldn't have killed him - that's a paradox. Becoming your own grandfather is a stable time loop.

Right now, religions - at least, some religions - get extra legal benefits that the non-religious don't. Government employees get extra time off for relgious holidays; the non-religious get nothing. Religion is family of metaphysical worldviews, and non-religious philosophies are another branch. Why do certain philosophies get extra privileges?

If a rule really is a good idea, then it should apply to everyone. If we can get by with some people not complying, then it doesn't need to be mandatory. Religion has nothing to do with it.

In terms of vaccines, we just need to arrange for consequences. Your kids not vaccinated, and can't demonstrate a medical reason why not? Fine. No public school for them, sorry. Quite probably other benefits are now off-limits, too.

If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded.

If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded.

I didn't propose that males would necessarily be irrational in the same way as you think females are. It could easily manifest in different ways or even diferent domains. But even in the same domain... what of the many men who damage their family relationships and careers because they manifest a lack of Johnson control?

I noticed based on the evidence and simple observation that it is much easier for it to happen in females.

Lemme propose a hypothetical. What if you and other males are just as 'irrational' as you think females are... but you don't notice it because you take your own irrationalities as given? It's hard to judge a culture from within; how much harder might it be to judge one's own biology?

If you are creating a design and then testing it empirically under relatively controlled conditions to determine if it works, then you are doing science.

Using science to evaluate a design? Sure. But the design itself is... wait for it... engineering. Of course engineers can do science, and scientist can engineer. Heck, musicians can be scientists, and vice versa. But that doesn't mean that engineering is science.

Nope. In the words of someone Slashdot readers should respect, Alan Cox: "Engineering does not require science. Science helps a lot but people built perfectly good brick walls long before they knew why cement works."

So let me explain what science actually is. Science is the process through which we derive reliable predictive rules through controlled experimentation. That's the science that gives us airplanes and flu vaccines and the Internet.

No - engineering "gives us airplanes and flu vaccines and the Internet". Science gives us the theoretical (in the scientific sense) frameworks and tools that engineering can apply to do that. The author shows at least as much confusion as those he decries, and he does it from the start.